Nearly 60% of smartphone users access the Internet everyday on their smart phone and 74% don’t leave home without it.

A massive 94% of smart hone users have researched a product or service on their phone and only 59% only look at the first page of results when searching on their smartphones.

Mobile advertising in Australia will grow from $9.1 million in 2010 to reach $76m by 2015 – that’s a massive growth at 46% a year (Frost & Sullivan).

So it's clear that mobile is here to stay and that lots and lots of people are using their mobile phones to search for businesses online. Not only that, but searching for restaurants is a huge part of mobile search.

The big question is, how does your business stack up on a mobile phone? Now's probably a great time to grab your phone and have a look yourself.

Mobile Traffic

Some of my clients receive over 40% of their online traffic from people on mobile devices, and this percentage is growing rapidly. My suggestion to you is - don't miss the boat! The reality is, if your restaurant website doesn't look great and browse quickly on a mobile device then you'll be leaking potential paying customers to your competitors who do have a mobile site.

Options

When it comes to mobile marketing and developing a mobile friendly website, there are several options available to you, each with their pros and cons. They include:

Using a 3rd party mobile website service

Adding mobile pages to your site as an add-on

Making your whole site responsive in design so that the layout changes to match the device being used to view it

Using jQuery Mobile to build your mobile site

Using a combination of the above

Building a mobile app

As you can see, it's complicated, and this is by no means the only options. Which option best fits your business? That's the million dollar question. Whatever you do, don't just sign up to the first person who walks through the door. Not all websites are the same, and not all industries are the same either. It is always best to hire a company with a proven track record in restaurant marketing and building restaurant websites if you're looking to get the best results from your online marketing efforts.

Action Steps

Decide today that you can no longer hold off on this critical business tool

Speak to local web experts that have experience in developing websites (both desktop and mobile) for your business type. Alternatively, reach out to us at 1st By Design - restaurant marketing is our speciality

Get clarity on the different options available to you and the one that's best for you.